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on a sudden surge of hope.
    News of the truce had come at the end of winter. A promise of hope for the new year, ushered in by the warmth of spring. Reisil remembered spinning around her garden, arms outflung, laughing aloud.
    If only it could turn into real peace. So many lives would be saved. Not that Kallas would see much difference. Ironic that the town had never seen a battle in all the five years the war had raged. Situated as is was, right on the border, it would have seemed like a prime plum for the picking. But in truth Kallas was just too small, too far out of the way, too uninteresting. It had no strategic value whatsoever, and certainly no monetary significance, not compared to the wealthier trade cities and more populated lands to the south. Maybe that was why so many townspeople raged against the truce, against anything that smacked of giving in to Patverseme. They hadn’t lost what others lost; they didn’t feel the pain of the war as others did.
    Reisil sighed, thinking of the angry outbursts she’d witnessed from those she would have thought eager for the war to end. Even Kaval’s father, the tightfisted trader Rikutud, though peace would mean a flourishing of his stunted trade. If not for Mysane Kosk—but that had changed everything. So many lives lost there.
    And it wasn’t just Kallas. Even Sodur had acknowledged how against a treaty people like the squatters would be; people who’d lost hands and ears, like Carden; people who’d lost their homes and their families; people who’d been raped and maimed. They didn’t want peace. They wanted justice.
    Reisil glanced over her shoulder, watching the plume of smoke curling up from the Lady’s grove. Not for the first time did she thank the Lady she was only a simple tark.
    “Let the ahakad-kaaslane take care of Kodu Riik, and I’ll take care of Kallas,” she said aloud. And then she hurried home to set her seedlings in the ground before the light faded.

Chapter 2
    K ek-kek-kek-kek! The shrill, strident call echoed imperatively down the river gorge. The hot midmorning sun slanted across neat garden rows. A sable shadow flicked through the branches of the fruit trees marching along the edge of the cliff, winking across Reisil’s sun-browned face as she dribbled water over newly planted hempnettle seedlings.
    Startled by sound and shadow, she spun around, dropping her bucket and sieve.
    Kek-kek-kek-kek!
    The cry scraped like a razor over Reisil’s nerves.
    Whistling sliced the leafy silence like the wail of a swung sickle. Wind across wings, Reisil realized as a large female goshawk alighted into the branches of a gnarled buckthorn, just beyond the reach of her fingertips. At two feet tall, the goshawk was the picture of lethal beauty. She spread her slate wings to full length, looking like some sort of avenging spirit. Her white-and-black-barred underbelly gleamed like ermine, fading streaks of brown revealing her youth.
    Reisil jumped as the bird snapped her wings closed then clacked her short, wickedly hooked beak, tipping her head to the side. The amber eye beneath a flaring white brow fixed the slender healer in place, scrutinizing the spare planes of her tanned face, her serious green eyes, her wide lips bracketed by lines of humor, all framed starkly by pitch-colored hair scraped back from her face in a thick, straight plait.
    Reisil endured the inspection, standing braced against the onslaught. She felt at once as if she’d been pierced through by a spear, and engulfed by the depthless waters of a volcanic lake.
    And she felt fear.
    It rose up in her stomach and clawed at her throat.
    “No,” she whispered. “No, no, no.”
    She heard words in her mind, steel and velvet.
    ~ I am Saljane, ahalad-kaaslane. I have found you at last!
    A welter of emotion flung itself over Reisil like a storm-driven wave—love, eagerness, friendship, exultation, hunger. Her mind merged with Saljane’s like water touching water, knowing her, being known.